Google Chrome unseats Internet Explorer as top browser worldwide

When Google Chrome launched a couple years ago, people knew that Google’s massive web presence and cross-promotional powers would help it gain market share quickly. But in just over 26 months Chrome 15 has surpassed Internet Explorer 8 to become the most popular browser in the world.

Yes, it’s a single browser version — and with Chrome’s silent auto-update mechanism, that’s the entire Google Chrome army against just one version of Internet Explorer. When you look at all versions, IE is still top dog at about 39% worldwide, with Chrome near 27%. That doesn’t make the feat any more impressive. In just two years, Google has managed to build, test, release, and promote Chrome well enough that it’s now a force to be reckoned with in the web browser market.

A couple of factors will cause the number to fluctuate over the next couple of months. Chrome 15’s share will slide into oblivion now that Chrome 16 has been pushed to the stable release channel, and IE9 will steal share from IE8 as automatic updates get switched on for folks using Windows Vista and Windows 7. IE8 will almost certainly lose more ground than Chrome 16 will in the early stages of updating, so Google may very well come out on top again in January.

Perhaps even more important about this month’s numbers is the fact StatCounter noted that for the first time, Chrome surpassed Internet Explorer during business-day use. Chrome has always been popular with users at home, but the fact that it’s now seeing more use during the 9-5 grind is a good indicator that network administrators are starting to roll out Chrome to their corporate users.

The numbers also bode well for Mozilla right now, as Firefox users continue to move away from the last version from their slower release cycle (3.6) and get on board with the more modern fast-track releases of the browser.